Columbus rejects permit parking for Leland Avenue

KEVIN PARKS, ThisWeek Community News

Tuesday

Apr 17, 2012 at 12:01 AMApr 18, 2012 at 7:16 PM

Too much street, not enough cars.

Too much street, not enough cars.

City officials have informed members of the Delawanda Residents' Association that their application for permit parking for the block of Leland Avenue between North High Street and Milton Avenue has been rejected.

It was close, though, and residents of the area unhappy with the behavior of a small percentage of the patrons at a nearby bar don't plan to let the matter rest, according to John Bennett, immediate past president of the association.

"We have a problem and we want to make sure that it's addressed," he said recently.

Clintonville Area Commission District 6 representative Jennifer Kangas said at the April session that the block in question is a long one, meaning that it's more difficult to meet the standards set by the city.

Leland Avenue residents and the people who patronized Bob's Bar at 4961 N. High St. had "peacefully coexisted for 10 years," Kangas said during her report on the parking permit denial. What she described as a "severe decline in the behavior" of some who frequent the establishment led the Delawanda Residents' Association to petition for permit parking along that stretch of the street last summer.

The behavior has, indeed, declined, according to Bennett.

"It has been a problem with a few patrons, a regular problem," he said. "There's been vandalism; there's been trash and condoms lying around. There has been noise with people yelling and shouting early in the morning when the bar closes, I presume. There have been fights É people walking up and down in the street late at night because there are no sidewalks.

"They have drunk a bit and they're wavering around, so it's a dangerous situation," Bennett added. "There have been people parking in driveways and blocking driveways."

According to the guidelines the city has for restricting who can park on residential streets, the first block of Leland Avenue failed to meet the test. Not enough vehicles registered as being from out of the neighborhood were parking on Leland during surveys conducted by city personnel.

The city regulations, which were adopted in October 2004, require that more than 25 percent of cars parked in an area under study for permit limitations be from out of the area.

According to Bennett, the surveys showed the parking situation along Leland came within just a few percentage points of meeting the test on one of the dates studied. He said he considered the surveys to be flawed because of the days and times they were conducted.

"We are making an attempt to contact the city to get them to meet to us so we can try to get this revised," Bennett said. "Their survey really didn't address the problem."

While municipal employees did three or four checks on the parking situation, Bennett said, "only one of them was really relevant to the problem we have."

The situation with a few inconsiderate bar patrons will not be going away, Bennett said, and neither will residents in their attempts to get some assistance with the matter.

"You have to be persistent about these things because the people in the city departments are very busy and I think they'd just as soon like to see these kinds of things go away," he said.

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